With a license to help (2013)

With a license to help

Designing for great stories

Bring, the business to business brand of Posten was the client of this school project. Posten is Norway's largest mail and logistics (shipment) group. Our assignment was to improve the service for Bring's customers. We focused on the small to medium businesses (1-3 persons), many of them web shops, sending parcels to their customers.

Focus area

Posten/Bring wants to win the customers hearts, but our research showed that some of the small business owners perceive them as somewhat impersonal and square. Some customers seemed to have low barriers in regards to changing shipment provider. We saw potential in renewing the actual service to contribute to Posten/Brings goal of winning the customers hearts.

Concept

Based on insights from the research, we chose to focus on winning the customers hearts through great experiences. We discovered that when you win hearts in high emotional moments, the experience do not only turn into a long lasting memory and loyalty, but a story worth telling to friends, colleagues and the internet. This is good marketing!

To be worth retelling the story needs some of these ingredients we found while reading customer stories that went viral on the web:

We identified some high emotional moments for the Bring customers, like starting up, business transitions, and when things goes wrong. If a customer does a big mistake, he is probably very emotional and feel like he don't deserve help. When he contacts customer care, all they have to do is to surprise and exceed his expectations, and do it in the right way. We visited the customer care department of Bring, and found that they are really motivated to do more for their customers, but are held back by systems and restrictions.

To make more good experiences and stories we proposed giving Bring employees the mandate and resources they need to help customers way beyond expectations. This will win hearts and create stories about Bring that live on and market the brand both internally and externally, effectively creating good company morale, happier workers, a stronger brand identity and lifelong loyalty from customers.

The as is scenario:

We picked the scenario where the customer does a mistake, and sends a package wrong. We then tested the service by sending parcels, and called customer service to stop them or redirect them. This is how it works today:

The future scenario:

After figuring out the scenario of today, we made a new one based on how Bring and the call center employees of Posten can act to make it a good experience and a great story. Afterwards we made guidelines and proposals for changes that make it easier for them to do it.

The detailed service blueprint below which shows in detail how Bring is acting in the future scenario. Please click to enlarge and zoom:

How to get there?

The image below explains different changes Posten must do, should do, and might do to make the ideal, future story possible:

Posten must empower the call center employees and give them freedom to to help and suprize customers.

Then they should change the intent of the call center, from not only answering questions but also solve problems and delight customers. It will be important to have call center KPI (measurements) which matches the new goals, beacause telling people to win hearts and measuring them on how many calls they take in an hour does not match. Posten should also give new information, guidelines, training and inspiration to call center employees.

Beacuse good experience reduces churn and good stories are good PR, Posten might enable call center employees to use funds from marketing budgets to delight and suprize the customers. They might use customer insights from the call center department to change systems and service parts that hinders good stories from happening.

Process

The customer journey below shows the main insights from workshops and interviews. Please click to enlarge and zoom:

Workshop and early sketches in relation to concept:

This project was nominated for Making Waves "Prize for service design" at the AHO works exhibition.